3/4" Bore PVC Flute
close up of "Bird" carved from Aromatic Red Cedar
1 1/2" Bore PVC Flute
top view of 1 1/2" bore PVC Flute
close up of Eagle Head decoration Click on Photographs to enlarge for better viewing
Today I am posting some pictures of the experiment with making flutes out of schedule 40 PVC pipe, which I did just to see if it could be done and how the tone or sound would be.
The reason I used PVC pipe was because I will be making some more Aromatic Red Cedar flutes with these bore dimensions of 3/4",1 1/2", and 7/8" and I did not want to try it on the good Cedar that I have because I first needed to experiment with dimensions such as length and placement of the fingering holes and the size of those holes to determine the "Tone" or sound.
I started out by cutting the PVC pipe to and estimated length and then cut a circle of Aromatic Red cedar for each of the two bore sizes and carefully inserted it in each flute up to the point where it blocks the area between the fast air chamber and the slow air chamber..it was a very tight fit which was needed to contain the air within the fast air chamber and channel it out and up under the "Bird" and across the sounding board to make the sound.
Next I drilled each hole and proceeded to cut out a "Bird" for each flute from Cedar and finish carved each one. I then decided to do a bit of decoration with tape..by placing tape where I did not want it to get painted and drew on the designs on the tape and cut away excess tape from the designs and then used a plastic spray primer and after letting it dry I sprayed it with a nice brown special plastic spray paint.
The next step was to adjust the fingering holes in size to get the flute "Tuned" and to my suprise..the flutes sound very good both in tone and key.
The reason I used PVC pipe was because I will be making some more Aromatic Red Cedar flutes with these bore dimensions of 3/4",1 1/2", and 7/8" and I did not want to try it on the good Cedar that I have because I first needed to experiment with dimensions such as length and placement of the fingering holes and the size of those holes to determine the "Tone" or sound.
I started out by cutting the PVC pipe to and estimated length and then cut a circle of Aromatic Red cedar for each of the two bore sizes and carefully inserted it in each flute up to the point where it blocks the area between the fast air chamber and the slow air chamber..it was a very tight fit which was needed to contain the air within the fast air chamber and channel it out and up under the "Bird" and across the sounding board to make the sound.
Next I drilled each hole and proceeded to cut out a "Bird" for each flute from Cedar and finish carved each one. I then decided to do a bit of decoration with tape..by placing tape where I did not want it to get painted and drew on the designs on the tape and cut away excess tape from the designs and then used a plastic spray primer and after letting it dry I sprayed it with a nice brown special plastic spray paint.
The next step was to adjust the fingering holes in size to get the flute "Tuned" and to my suprise..the flutes sound very good both in tone and key.
1 comment:
Brilliant idea...lovely flutes. Ingenious.
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